Member-only story
Book Promotion Advice Reaped from Analyzing a Decade of Reading
What mining my own data taught me as a publisher and what authors and writers can learn from that
As a longtime indie book publisher and an avid nonfiction reader, I have long been aware that my own reading habits do not line up with the vague, idealistic idea of a reader that we often fall back on in the business: A person who hears about a book and then buys a copy at her local bookstore or on Amazon!
We all know better, for we are readers ourselves. Most of us who love books and read a lot of them simply can’t afford to buy, at least new and at full price, all of the books we read. For those whose income depends on books being purchased at a decent price and in sufficient quantities, this is an inconvenient truth that we don’t often give its due attention in our big-picture considerations and financial models.
Recently, as I was adding my latest read to my LibraryThing account as I have with every book I’ve read in the past several years, I realized this collection point made it easy to mine data on my own reading and buying habits and started taking notes on the last 250 books I read. What I discovered was eye-opening at the curiosity level, but also valuable for my thinking and planning as a publisher, and for you as…
